Prologue

Whenever a great physician treats illness, they must first calm their spirit and settle their will, free of desire and selfish seeking, and first give rise to a great heart of compassion and mercy, with a vow to relieve the suffering of all sentient beings. Whether one who comes seeking aid in sickness is of noble or humble birth, rich or poor, young or old, beautiful or plain, friend or foe, Chinese or foreign, wise or foolish — all must be regarded equally, as one would regard one’s dearest kin. One must not look ahead or behind, worrying about their own fortune or misfortune, guarding their own life and safety. Seeing the suffering of others, feel it as though it were your own, and let your heart and mind be moved with sorrow. Do not avoid steep and treacherous places; through day and night, cold and heat, hunger, thirst, and exhaustion — go with a single heart to offer aid, without any thought of form or effort. One who acts in this way may be called a great physician for all living beings. To act contrary to this is to be a great thief against all living beings.

— “On the Excellence of Medicine” · Sun Simiao

1

Beneath the night sky, the tightly shut doors and windows rattled and shook. More than a dozen identical faces pressed madly into every crack in the walls, their bloodshot eyes peering greedily into this tin-walled shack standing on a stretch of mud.

On this patch of land in southern New Delhi, a stifling, strange odor drifted at all hours from the slumbering slum not far away.

This place was usually quiet, because the people who lived here needed to busy themselves with only one thing each day: filling their stomachs. Between crumbling houses and foul ditches, children who cried from hunger were a common sight; men who came home pushing their old bicycles with nothing to show for their efforts could only shake their heads helplessly at the expectant eyes of their wives and children. Every so often, a weakened elder would reach the end of their life through starvation or illness; and some young people, unable to bear the weight of their existence, would choose the cheapest yet most effective rat poison.

The one mercy was that at least they could still afford a doctor. Or more precisely — there was a doctor willing to come see them, one who never charged a consultation fee and always left behind free medicine. Each time he departed beneath those grateful yet despairing eyes, that man of few smiles would leave only a single remark: Steady yourselves.

The trouble was — steadying oneself in the current situation was no simple matter.

Inside the tin-walled shack, Jia Yi stood facing me, pressing his back firmly against the violently shaking main door. The gleaming seven-tailed sword he called Mo had already leapt free of the toothpick case and was now in his grip. Had I not always called his personal weapon the “toothpick sword,” he would never have solemnly told me that this shifting, snow-bright, semi-translucent longsword was not called a toothpick — it was called Qi Wei Mo. What a strange name.

“At this rate of brute resistance, the house won’t hold much longer.” Ao Chi stood at a window with a broken latch, pressing both hands against it to keep the creatures outside from squeezing through.

“One minute — I can clear everything outside.” Jia Yi glanced through the gap in the door, his voice cold.

“Half a minute is all I need!” Ao Chi shot him a look.

Behind me, the man who moved through life without a whisper stepped forward. The swaying light fell across his salt-and-pepper hair and his ever-clean physician’s robe as he said: “That matter — I’ll leave it in your hands.”

“You seem quite calm about this.” I looked at him, then at the dozen or so figures outside. “Are you certain you want to do it that way?”

He smiled: “I’m a doctor.” With that, he produced a folded piece of paper from inside his robe, handed it to me, glanced toward the inner room, and said: “Please give this to Emily for me.”

As his hand moved, a faint shimmer passed before my eyes — on his wrist, he wore a string of moonstone beads that, by all accounts, could not be removed under any circumstances. To most people, they would appear to be an ordinary variety of crystal: thirteen milky-white, semi-translucent spheres, their surface shimmering with a soft blue glow that shifted with the light — mellow and warm, like the finest sliver of moonlight plucked straight from the night sky. And so this type of crystal had long been colloquially known as moonstone.

But I knew the string of moonstones on his wrist was no “ordinary” moonstone. He had told me clearly: this string of moonlight had a name all its own — Yue Yin Niang.

And I knew with equal clarity: this was the stone I had been searching for. The sixth one.

From South Africa to India, from the Boulder-Cleaving Axe to Yue Yin Niang — this chapter of the story had been an arduous one, even by the standards of a battle-hardened proprietress. I scarcely knew where to begin telling it. Perhaps it ought to start with a mosquito?

2

Smack! An autumn mosquito met its unfortunate end in Old Sun’s hand. The autumns in the mountains were always particularly long, and the mosquitoes here were bigger than cattle.

He made his unsteady way up the hillside. A few old banyan trees embraced his small courtyard; the ground beneath was cool and dim.

The creaking wooden gate swung open. He stepped through, draped in muted moonlight, let out a contented belch, and leaned against the doorframe. The old gourd hanging at his waist swayed back and forth.

“Still not sleeping? Even Little Huang is asleep!” Old Sun wiped his mouth and addressed the young man still busy at the table inside. Little Huang was the rooster they kept — a late sleeper and early riser, reliable to the minute.

The young man gave no response. He was focused intently on a willow-leaf blade, moving it across a thick, lush green leaf. The rubbish bin at his feet was already half-filled with fragmented, ruined leaves.

“The fighting broke out in Wuchang,” Old Sun said, without any intention of going inside, simply leaning there and speaking to himself. “This gunshot — the emperor, that old institution — I’d wager it’s finished from now on.”

The young man remained absorbed in his blade and leaf. In the clear light, his face — roughened somewhat by the mountain winds — showed distinct bone structure and fine features, carrying a weathered beauty that had nothing to do with age. Even with the most unremarkable buzzcut, he was a person worth looking at.

“You cut your hair again?” Old Sun eyed the top of his head with dismay. “I’ve told you not to go to Old Wang at the head of the village — that old fellow’s cuts look like they were done by a dog chewing on someone’s head. I keep saying, Pian Pian…”

“Why am I never able to peel the leaf vein out intact?” The young man suddenly looked up, a fragment of broken leaf vein pinched between his fingers. “Old man — is there some trick you still haven’t taught me?”

“Don’t call me ‘old man’ — call me Teacher!” Old Sun glared at him. “No manners whatsoever.”

“You stop calling me Pian Pian, and I’ll call you Teacher.” He tossed the leaf vein into the bin, wiped his hands, and picked up a fresh leaf. “You said that the day I can peel a complete, undamaged leaf vein from a leaf with this blade is the day I become a true physician.”

“Very well, Student Number Five. As my sole student at present, Teacher will answer you solemnly: there is only one trick.” Old Sun held up a finger with performative flair. “Steady yourself!”

“I’m not impulsive,” he said, glancing at Old Sun. “You’re fooling me again with nonsense.”

“That’s because you still haven’t understood what it truly means to be steady.” Old Sun yawned. “You keep practicing. Teacher is going to sleep.”

He lowered his head, working at the leaf with greater focus and care. The blade, thin as a cicada’s wing, wound its way between the veins and the leaf flesh with a precision surpassing even the finest meticulous brushwork painting.

When would he ever be as accomplished as Teacher, praised by countless patients?

No sooner had that thought drifted through his mind than his hand slipped, a vein snapped — another failure.

Di Wu Pian flung the blade down and walked to the window with a restless, vaguely irritable energy. Outside, the night was exactly as described in the verse: The bright moon shines between the pines; the clear spring flows over the stones.

The scenery below Luoying Mountain was as always — serene and beautiful.

He had been studying medicine under Old Sun for almost fifty years. The old man had taken him traveling across the world — prosperous cities and quiet little villages, he had lived in them all. This year was their fifth year settled on Luoying Mountain, and the mountain folk nearby all liked them, for the old man never charged anything to treat their illnesses.

A slightly cold wind swept in from outside; he shut the window, but his gaze lingered for a long time on the round mirror hanging on the wall. The mirror had not been wiped in some time, and the reflection within was like a person seen through fog. He stared at his own indistinct face. This face, no matter how swiftly time flew past, would never change. He was no longer a “young man” — and his age was far beyond fifty.

He of course knew he was not human. Yet the absurdity of it was that a life not human was nonetheless subject to a human’s ailments.

If he remembered correctly, he had woken up in a graveyard made of unmarked graves — woken by the noise. Some kind soul had brought a Daoist priest to conduct a rite of passage for the departed souls interred there, and the firecrackers were deafening.

He had roused from sleep, stretched, and countless glittering jade fragments had fallen from his body.

His mind was sluggish, his memory a blank. Naked, he had crawled out from behind a grave mound and frightened everyone present half to death.

What followed was learning and wandering — beginning from nothing, learning how to take in this new world.

The awkwardness of it: clearly not human, yet he grew cold, grew hungry, was capable of injury, capable of illness. To earn money for food, he had worked unloading cargo at a dock battered by chill winds, worked himself half to death, only to be cheated by a grasping foreman who said the wages would not be available for another three months.

Burning with fever, he had silently left the dock amid the foreman’s triumphant smile — no argument, no commotion.

Behind him, the dock and the cargo ships growing further with every step suddenly erupted in black smoke without warning. It looked like fire, yet not a single flame was visible; in full view of everyone, they turned to ash. The foreman and all the workers who had not escaped in time rolled about on the ground, their clothing fused to their flesh with a sizzling sound, as though being scorched by raging fire, and they soon perished.

Everyone was stunned. The incident was never given any satisfactory explanation; the local authorities scribbled “fire” on their report and filed it away.

His fever worsened. His vision blurred as he wandered through the streets aimlessly. No money for food or medicine — would it be acceptable to steal, to rob, to deceive?

No, it would not.

His own answer was crystal clear. Something deep within him, like a profound instinctive awareness, admonished him: such scrabbling and scheming for survival is a base and lowly act, unbecoming of what he was.

But what was he? He still could not remember.

His last remaining strength carried him to the entrance of a restaurant. The last person he saw before losing consciousness was the old man.

That day, the old man was dressed exactly as he was today — in plain cloth jacket and cloth shoes wholly unsuited to the season, his face a map of wrinkles, smelling of medicinal herbs, the tawny gourd at his waist oiled to a lustrous gleam.

The old man’s herbal decoction fished him back from the edge. In the inn, fed and rested, he looked at the old man absorbed in his book and said: “I want to study medicine with you.”

“Fine,” the old man replied without blinking.

And that was how simply it happened. He became Old Sun’s student.

The old man said that a person without a proper name is not properly established, and so a name was needed. He assumed it would be something appropriately dignified — only to find the old man furrowing his brow in thought for a long while, then glancing at the book in his hand and slapping the table: “Got it! We’ll call you Di Wu Pian — Fifth Chapter!”

What a wretched name!

The old man said it was right there in front of him — Chapter Five — which made it heaven’s will! Besides, “Di Wu” was itself a surname with a long and storied heritage. Very meaningful!

“As you like,” he said, shaking his head. He looked at the book in the old man’s hand. “What is that? Anything to do with medicine?”

The old man closed it to reveal the cover, and gave a gleeful grin: “Not at all! It’s a novel written by little Li the storyteller on Willow Street — The Epic Battle of Spring Thirty-Niang Against Zhu Bajie! What a read!”

He fell completely silent.

Fifty years — not short, not long. He had learned the greater part of the old man’s medical knowledge. The blade was the final lesson, and the hardest stretch. Yet the old man had never permitted him to treat a patient on his own, always saying he was not yet ready to be called a fully-fledged physician.

In fifty years, apart from a few more wrinkles on his face and hair considerably more sparse, the old man had not changed much.

He had once asked the old man how old he was. The old man had answered with a grin: “One thousand, three hundred and thirty.”

He had not believed it: “A human being cannot live that long. Unless you are a demon.”

“I have a technique for immortality — do you believe me?” The old man patted that ever-present gourd with a mysterious air. “When I kick the bucket, this gourd goes to you. The very essence of the healer’s way is all in here.”

What an old fibber — it wasn’t as if he’d never snuck a peek inside that battered gourd. It was completely empty, used most of the time as a water flask or wine flask, and sometimes the old fellow would bring leftover broth back in it.

He rubbed his aching eyes, pulled his gaze from the mirror, turned to the table, drew a deep breath, and picked up the blade and the leaf again.

3

A death came to the village.

Several burly men came running toward them, carrying a woman who had drowned herself on a plank door.

Shortly after, another group came rushing into the courtyard, carrying a young woman on someone’s back — her face white, her lips purple, utterly senseless.

Everyone cried out frantically: “Sun the divine healer, save us!”

Yet this time, even Old Sun was powerless. One had jumped into a river, one had taken poison, and both had been brought far too late.

In the room, two bodies that still held warmth lay on opposite sides. Those who knew them had gathered around, weeping and wailing. A man of about thirty — decent enough in appearance — knelt in the middle, slapping himself across the face again and again, murmuring like a madman: “If only they could split me in two! If only they could split me in two!”

Di Wu Pian stood at the doorway, took two looks inside, then turned and walked to the stone steps in the courtyard where the old man sat drinking tea. It was midday; the sun was strong, but somehow it felt not at all warm.

The situation was not complicated. The man had gone to work in the city, and once he had money, began keeping a mistress behind his wife’s back. When the affair was discovered, the man wanted to separate from his wife; but his wife threatened to kill herself rather than let him go, and refused to allow him to formally take a concubine. The man dithered for a year or two, at an impasse. Then the mistress grew impatient for a formal status, and made her way from the city to the village to have it out. Both women came to a bitter, unresolvable impasse. In the end, the wife in her fury threw herself into the river; the mistress, unwilling to be outdone, took poison. They left behind this man who didn’t know what to do with himself.

“What a racket,” he said, sitting beside the old man as the crying from inside swelled louder and louder.

The old man said nothing, drinking his tea and soaking in the sunlight.

After a moment’s silence, he asked: “If there were a kind of medical technique that could truly turn one person into two identical people, do you think that would be good? If there were two of that man, these two women wouldn’t have had to die.”

“It would not be good. No matter what, a person who is not sufficiently steady will come to grief sooner or later.” The old man took a sip of tea, looked at him, and then suddenly asked: “Have you managed to peel out the leaf vein yet?”

“No,” he answered.

“Your question just now is precisely the reason you cannot peel out the leaf vein.” The old man’s eyes glinted with sly wisdom.

He furrowed his brow, unable to see the connection.

“You can’t work it out now — but one day you will.” The old man wiped his mouth, then picked up his gourd and turned it over in his hands. “I remember the year I met you, there was a mysterious disaster at the Haicheng wharf — the cargo ships and a great many workers all died violently. The smell of burning was somewhat different from that of an ordinary fire.”

“Is that so?” A wild bird flew past the wall; he turned to watch it go. “You have a keen nose.”

“Over my lifetime I have identified no fewer than ten thousand varieties of medicinal herbs by smell alone — not the subtlest distinction can escape me.” The old man went on admiring his gourd. “You have always carried that particular strange scent. It has not dissipated to this day.”

In the sunlight, the gourd’s color deepened, and the blotchy patterns spread across its plump, almost comic body in arrangements that defied explanation.

“You’ll really give it to me?” He changed the subject.

“Of course.” The old man spoke with certainty. “I told you — the moment I kick the bucket, it’s yours.”

He smiled: “Then when are you going to kick the bucket, you indestructible old thing?”

“In about a month, I’d say.” The old man smiled.

At dusk, the weeping group finally departed with their deceased, torches lit, making their slow way back toward the village.

The small courtyard at last returned to quiet.

In the room, the old man sat properly upright beneath the lamplight, spread out a stack of writing paper, lifted his brush, and wrote page after page.

He knew the old man was transcribing scripture again. The Heart Sutra — the shortest sutra in the Buddhist canon — accumulated in a neat pile, character by character, each line written with the same meticulous care the old man gave to his medical prescriptions.

He kept writing through the deep of the night, until the paper was exhausted and the ink was exhausted, before calling him over and handing him the stack of transcribed text, saying: “Burn these.”

“So many?” He ventured a question. The old man had always had this habit — whenever he encountered a patient beyond saving, he would afterward transcribe a sutra for them and burn it as an offering.

“I also copied some for the children in Wuchang.” The old man rubbed his bleary eyes. “For every fire there are bones. For every battle there are the fallen.”

He looked at the sutras in his hands: “Then these are far from enough.”

“Sincerity of heart suffices.” The old man’s eyes shot wide. “Do you truly wish to work this old bag of bones to death?”

He shrugged and went to the courtyard.

The ashes of the sutras were caught by the wind and scattered in every direction.

He needed no fire source — he could “ignite” anything he wished to burn. The old man knew of this ability; they had never bought matches at home. Economical.

Returning to the room, the old man had already curled up in bed and fallen asleep, snoring thunderously.

For fifty years, the old man had been the same — treating patients, eating and sleeping, without great sorrow or great joy, without manic energy or dark moods, as still and unfathomable as a deep pool of water.

He walked over and tucked the old man’s blanket around him.

The moonlight brightened outside the window and fell across his left wrist — a string of milky-white round beads, shimmering with faint blue light.

He gazed at the beads in a trance. Apart from the old man, these had been his longest companion. From the moment he had woken up in that graveyard, this string of beads had been on his wrist. No matter what was done, they could not be removed — not because they were too tight, but because less than half a second after being taken off, they would reappear in their original position. No matter how far they were thrown, they would always be back on his wrist.

They and he were, it seemed, of one body.

4

A month later, the old man truly died. That day, there was no sun; the first chill of early winter had just begun to creep in.

The old man died in his sleep, very peacefully.

The night before, when he had gone to tuck in the old man whose sleeping posture was wrong, the old man had roused once — looking up at him with drowsy eyes and saying nothing, only extending one finger and drawing the character for “one” on his forehead.

Then the old man had rolled over, begun snoring, and never woke again.

He buried the old man beneath the oldest and thickest tree behind the courtyard, and erected a rough stone marker.

Carved into the stone was a single line: An old man lies here.

But beside this line was another line of characters not much bigger than ants: If you can read this clearly, it means… you’ve stepped on my foot! Get off!

This was something the old man had instructed him on long, long ago — he said that when he died, the epitaph should be written just so: no need to extol accomplishments, and no need for excessive grief.

In the evening light, the wind through the trees played a soft, rustling accompaniment; the stone marker, darkened with age, was as inconspicuous as the plain clothes the old man had worn in life.

He stood before the grave marker for a long time, his eyes moving back and forth over the epitaph, and finally — smiled.

Only someone like the old man could do something like this. His whole life had been one of laughter and cheerful eccentricity. To coax children too frightened of bitterness or pain into taking their medicine and bearing their needles, he would smear pot soot on his face and make it a big painted clown face to delight them, distracting their attention. When a plague had descended upon a village and it had been quarantined, waiting only for the authorities’ order to be burned to the ground, all the other physicians had fled as far as they could — only the old man had run inside. And of course there were times when patients could not be saved; grief-stricken family members who then turned on him as a outlet for their anguish were not uncommon. The scar on his forehead had come from a grieving family member striking him with a stone in a moment of lost control. He hadn’t even dodged — he had only said he had done everything possible, offered his condolences, then pressed a hand to the wound and left.

This old fellow had proven his “steadiness” through one act after another. And yet, how could a person with feelings and emotions truly maintain such composure at every moment? Immensely difficult. Even he, who was not human, could not manage it.

Or perhaps — there was some trick to it that the old man had never told him. In any case, there was much the old man had never told him: his true identity; the meaning of that character “one” drawn on his forehead at the hour of death. By the time the old man was in the ground, he knew only that the old man’s surname was Sun — he didn’t even know this “Teacher’s” full name, let alone anything else. What the old man had left him was a body of medical knowledge, a gourd, and nothing more.

He returned to the courtyard, packed up his modest bundle, then hung that gourd at his waist just as the old man had always done, shouldered his medicine chest, and walked out of the courtyard gate.

He did not inform anyone. He simply felt that it was time to go out and walk — wherever the road led.

From now on, he supposed he was a physician too.

5

The world outside was also not a pleasant place. One day the emperor was toppled; the next there was a restoration attempt; the day after, someone rose up to resist. Wherever he went, the sound of gunfire and artillery was constant. Swaggering marches could be seen at any moment — protesting this, opposing that — and the faces at the front of every march were always extremely young. Struggles for dominance, rivers of blood — these too were familiar sights in every city. So at least there was never any shortage of patients.

His consultation fees had always been minimal — the old man had told him: saving a single life outweighs ten thousand pieces of gold; fees need only be enough to cover three meals a day.

Everyone who knew him called him Dr. Di Wu. Many people found his name amusing; some mischievous children would ask him whether his older brothers and sisters were called First, Second, Third, and Fourth. He always answered solemnly: “I have no brothers or sisters. I go alone.”

He was never quite as humorous as the old man.

The times did not grow calmer with the passing years — they only grew more chaotic. Fires of war burned everywhere; powerful figures rose one after another, each wanting to carve the largest piece of flesh from this land, no matter how many lives it cost.

His medical skill was long since sufficient to leave a pack of mediocre physicians far behind — even though he still could not peel a complete leaf vein from a leaf.

The old man had said he could not truly be called a fully-fledged physician until he could — surely that had been the old man’s way of teasing him. Just look at every person he had pulled back from death: each one of them offered him a thousand thanks, each one called him “divine healer.”

The gourd at his waist had become the very emblem of xuan hu ji shi — the wandering physician who heals the world. He had examined this gourd countless times; it was still just a gourd, not even remotely connected to anything that could be called “the essence of the healer’s way.” The old man had been making things up again.

Having wandered the world alone for some decades now, he had grown weary of the endless artillery fire, weary of always fishing bullet fragments of every size from a sea of blood and torn flesh. The acrid smell of gunpowder in the air made him cough incessantly, and the gratitude of his patients no longer brought him the same pleasure it once had.

And so he packed his things and left. This time, he walked much farther.

On the other side of the ocean, human beings looked different — pale-skinned, with golden hair, and eyes that were actually blue. He didn’t know whether the old man had ever come to a place like this, but even if he had, a life with only coffee and no spirits would have been hard to endure.

His face had not changed; only his hair and clothing had. With Old Wang at the village head gone from his life, he had never had another buzzcut. Once his freely growing hair passed his shoulders, he would grab some scissors and cut it roughly short, which left his head perpetually resembling a disheveled hedgehog. In this city called London, traditional Chinese long gowns were not the fashion — men wore trim suits and leather shoes, and even the practice of medicine required something called a “medical license.”

He had no need of such things. All he needed was a place to eat and sleep, large enough to set out a long table.

Mrs. Li, who ran a sundry shop on the street corner, gave him the room above her shop to live in, free of charge.

That year, Mrs. Li had been traveling home from visiting relatives when they found themselves on the same ship crossing the great ocean. She had contracted a severe case of typhoid and came very close to being thrown into the sea as a source of contagion — the European physician aboard showed little concern for the life of an ordinary Chinese citizen. It was he who had wrested the barely-breathing Mrs. Li from the hands of several ignorant brutes, and over three days, dragged her back from the threshold of death.

A debt of life — compensated with only lodgings. Mrs. Li felt this was far from adequate. Even though the sundry shop she ran with her husband earned little, she still wanted to give Di Wu Pian as much as she possibly could — but he declined everything. He said that a place to stay and three meals a day were more than enough.

And so he became a physician living above a sundry shop, with no medical license. The people who came to him were mostly fellow countrymen, many of them brought along by Mrs. Li. Within this small circle, he was still “Dr. Di Wu,” still the “divine healer.”

The gourd was hung by the window, gazing out at the outside scenery with a slightly bored air through fog-heavy glass.

Had Mrs. Li not brought that young and beautiful woman to him on that drizzly afternoon, perhaps everything that followed would never have happened.

6

“The fever has broken!”

In an elegant, comfortable room, the young Mrs. Carter pressed her hand to the forehead of her daughter, not yet three years old, then glanced at the thermometer. She turned to Di Wu Pian with delighted surprise.

“Good. That’s well then.” He packed up his medicine chest and handed her a small packet of medicinal powder. “Dissolved in warm water. She should be fully recovered within three days.”

“Why were you able to do it?” The child’s mother took the packet, her vivid blue eyes staring at this plainly dressed stranger in disbelief. “My father and his colleagues tried every method available and could not bring Lorelia’s fever down.”

“Wrong medicine for the condition — naturally it would have no effect.” He shouldered his medicine chest.

“One moment, please.” She took a thick stack of banknotes from the bedside cabinet and placed it in his hands. “Thank you. Mrs. Li did not lie — you are a truly exceptional physician.”

He drew out two bills, folded them, and put them in his pocket, then placed the remainder on the table. “Farewell.”

At that moment, the bedroom door was shoved open rudely and two British men — one elderly, one young — came storming in. The younger of the two seized Mrs. Carter’s wrist and roared: “Have you gone mad?! Bringing someone like this to treat our daughter? Good God — if Robert hadn’t come to the clinic to warn me in time, I could never have imagined you could do something this foolish!”

The older man sized up Di Wu Pian with a look, his brow furrowed tightly. “Annie, do you have any idea how much danger you may have put Lorelia in?”

Di Wu Pian paid the two men not the slightest attention, turned, and made to leave.

“Stop right there!” The younger man released Mrs. Carter and stepped in front of him in one stride. “I am Lorelia’s father, and also the deputy director of Grayling Hospital. I cannot let you leave now. If anything goes wrong with my daughter because of you, you will bear full responsibility!”

“Mr. Charles Carter, and my respected father,” Mrs. Carter began, her voice cold, “might you not examine Lorelia first, before deciding whether to be rude to the physician I invited?”

The old man paused, then came back to himself from his indignation and stepped forward to examine his sleeping granddaughter. Before long, his mouth fell slightly open, his expression full of astonishment.

“The fever has broken… pulse and heartbeat are perfectly normal.” The old man raised his head, his voice carrying both delight and a reluctance he could not quite conceal, and said to the man called Charles: “Lorelia is fine.”

Charles didn’t believe it. Only after personally examining his daughter did he look up in stunned disbelief, at a loss for what to say.

“I’m sorry you were treated so rudely.” Mrs. Carter came to stand before Di Wu Pian and offered him a sincere apology.

Di Wu Pian waved a hand, turned, and walked out the door.

“Who is that Chinese man?” Charles asked his wife, having recovered his composure.

Mrs. Carter smiled: “Then perhaps you should ask your faithful Robert — isn’t his finest skill keeping you informed of my every move?”

“You…” Charles turned red with humiliated fury.

“Are these what he left?” The older man picked up the medicinal powder Di Wu Pian had left behind, held it under his nose, and sniffed. He turned to Charles: “Take this back to the hospital and have it analyzed. See what the composition is.”

From beginning to end, everyone present — except for Mrs. Carter — had their focus on something other than Lorelia.

Before leaving the room, Charles murmured to his wife: “Tonight’s charity banquet — you will attend with me. Every person at that banquet is among the finest in the medical world, and several are leading members of the Royal Medical Society. Use your head, and accompany me in making a good impression.”

The bedroom door slammed shut. Mrs. Carter sat expressionlessly on the edge of the bed, gently holding her daughter’s hand. The mirror on the dressing table reflected her face — showing some weariness, but still lovely.

Annie Stuart was her birth name. The Stuart family had been the most illustrious figures in this city’s medical world. From her great-grandfather onward, every generation had produced physicians of great virtue and humanitarian service. By her father’s generation, the family had become the directors of the most famous Grayling Hospital. She herself had been one of the rare gifted female students in the medical school — yet before she could complete her studies, she had rushed into marriage with Charles, becoming the young Mrs. Carter. The reason was simple, and not at all dignified: no one knew that her father, behind his distinguished profession, was an incorrigible pathological gambler. The underground gambling houses had swallowed the better part of the Stuart family’s fortune, and without an alliance with the Carter family, the Stuarts would long since have declared bankruptcy. The Carter family had started out in the timber business and were fabulously wealthy, but had never gained acceptance into the upper social circles. Now that a son had studied medicine, not only marrying the daughter of a prominent medical family but also rising to deputy director of Grayling Hospital, the Carter family finally felt a sense of vindication.

One family had name without wealth; the other had wealth without name. Each supplied what the other lacked, with a mutual, unspoken understanding. Annie still remembered how it had been only her elderly father’s tearful, desperate pleading that had forced her to agree to marry a man she had seen only in a photograph.

Three years had passed. Charles had grown ever more professionally successful — even the most authoritative and physician-venerating Royal Medical Society in the country had placed him on the shortlist for new membership.

Annie let out a soft sigh, rose, and retrieved a wooden box from the corner of the wardrobe. She sat down at the windowsill. The last of the evening light fell into the opened box, illuminating a slender scalpel — still gleaming and sharp.

She had brought it back from school. It was her only memento. Her dream had always been to become an excellent physician. But that dream had ended as only a dream. Now, Mrs. Carter was merely an ornament beside Mr. Carter — a vessel for bearing children. He required nothing of her but compliance, presenting the appearance of a loving couple before the eyes of others at all times, helping him establish a fine public image. That was sufficient.

She picked up the cold scalpel and traced a few motions through the air, then finally shut it back inside the box.

7

Mrs. Carter became a regular at Mrs. Li’s sundry shop. Each time she arrived, she wore a flat cap and a suit with leather shoes, her golden hair carefully tucked up inside the brim of the cap. At a quick glance, she looked like a dashing young man.

Her sole purpose in coming was to trail after Di Wu Pian like an eager student, asking questions at length, taking careful notes in a small notebook the whole while — including detailed diagrams she drew of the body’s acupressure points. These extraordinary medical techniques from a distant land filled her with constant wonder.

Toward this “female student” who had appeared out of nowhere, Di Wu Pian neither liked nor disliked her. Whatever she asked, he would answer honestly and fully — how to identify medicinal herbs, how to match the medicine to the condition. In short, everything the old man had given him, he taught to her in kind. The knowledge she had acquired in medical school was also something Di Wu Pian had never encountered; as a student who had left school without completing her degree, she was equally happy to share her knowledge with him in return.

For months on end, the conversations between them concerned nothing but medicine. Yet the give-and-take, the mutual exchange, was never dull. Once, this woman even brought along a cumbersome camera and insisted on having a photograph taken with him. Unable to dissuade her, he sat beside her and faced the lens, unable to manage a smile no matter how hard he tried.

As time passed, if she went several weeks without appearing, Di Wu Pian found himself gazing out the window without thinking about it.

This woman, with whom he shared common purpose, had seemed to become a habit in his quiet life — he had grown accustomed to the way she listened attentively with her notes in hand; accustomed to the sight of her stuffing medicinal herbs into her mouth and chewing through the strange taste with determined restraint; accustomed to the sound of her leather shoes on the wooden staircase.

What he could say for certain was that this sundry shop was the place where he had stayed the longest since leaving Luoying Mountain.

The winters here were damp and cold. The daytime fog stubbornly veiled every corner.

Today was the Western Christmas holiday, and yet she was crouched upstairs in the sundry shop, sitting beside Di Wu Pian. The two of them stared in silence at the small stove on the floor. On the stove sat a clay medicinal pot; the brown herbal decoction bubbled away with a thick, clean-scented fragrance that filled the entire room.

His specially compounded cold remedy was the finest thing this winter had to offer — inexpensive and effective, and a favorite among the poor.

“Doesn’t wearing that make it dark?” he asked without looking up.

From the moment she had entered to now, she had kept a pair of dark glasses perched on her nose, looking conspicuously out of place.

“Didn’t sleep well — my eyes are uncomfortable, and sensitive to light.” She answered accordingly, then instinctively adjusted her glasses and deliberately changed the subject: “Your English is getting better and better. Mrs. Li must be an excellent teacher.”

His peripheral vision fell to her wrist — a dark bruise, unmistakably visible.

Taking advantage of a moment when she was not paying attention, he suddenly moved very quickly and removed her dark glasses.

She instinctively turned her face away, but not before her eye — bloodshot, the socket bruised — was already in plain sight.

“Your husband hit you?” he asked, his voice neutral.

She pressed her lips tightly together. After a long pause: “He wants me to go with him to India. A village — the most desolate and disease-ridden place there is.”

He turned to look at her. “India?”

“He has long wanted to join the Royal Medical Society, but to formally become a member, his credentials are not distinguished enough.” She looked at the herbal pot on the stove. “The people in the Medical Society — some have written books and established theories, some have overcome rare and difficult illnesses, some have contained a severe epidemic — all of them are ‘heroes’ who have gone through fire and water for the safety of all humanity. Charles cannot produce any such ‘achievement.’ And so, after much deliberation, he selected a village in India that has long suffered from a severe shortage of doctors and medicine.”

“To donate medical services?” He smiled slightly.

“To seek fame at others’ expense,” she said coolly.

“How is Lorelia?” he asked.

She shook her head; the firelight danced in her vivid blue eyes: “Three days ago, Charles had his men and the nanny take Lorelia to India. I tried to take Lorelia back, but I didn’t have the strength. He said that no matter where I went, I am his private property — wherever he is, I must be.”

“I see.” He nodded, then turned to the cabinet, retrieved a box of medicinal ointment, and handed it to her. “This is very effective at dispersing bruising and reducing swelling.”

She accepted the ointment with a complicated expression and murmured a word of thanks.

He stepped forward and extinguished the stove, and said: “Then I wish you a safe journey.”

Silence fell over the room.

“That — what is that?” She suddenly pointed at the gourd hanging in the window.

“Nothing much. A little keepsake from my teacher. The physicians of ancient China were very fond of carrying their medicine pellets in one of those.”

“And the string of beads on your wrist — was that also from your teacher?” She drew her gaze back and let it rest on his wrist. The dimmer the light, the more clearly visible was the glow from that string of beads.

“No.” He shook his head.

“I’d guess a girl gave them to you.” She suddenly smiled.

He answered honestly: “I don’t know.”

“Di Wu Pian,” she said suddenly, calling him by his full name, “will you come to India?”

He stood with his back to her, still for a moment, then shook his head: “I don’t know.”

Neither spoke again. From outside the window came the faint sound of a choir, clear and distant.

8

Smack! That was the seventh mosquito killed today.

India’s climate truly was paradise for mosquitoes.

Di Wu Pian sat on a rock outside a makeshift tent and passed a bag of red and green medicinal pills to Annie. “These — give them to the children in the village. They’ll stop the diarrhea.”

“I’m so glad you came after all.” Annie took the pills with delight. She had been in this place called Karabara Village for nearly a month; her fair complexion had been reddened by the sun, and mosquito bites marked her skin all over. But whenever she came to their agreed meeting spot and saw Di Wu Pian, she would smile with particular brilliance.

“You’ve said that many times now.” Di Wu Pian kept his eyes down, organizing his medicine chest.

The third day after Annie left England, he had bid farewell to Mrs. Li and followed the map in Annie’s letter to India. The decision had been very sudden, and he himself could not explain it.

After a long and arduous journey by sea and land, he had set up camp in a stretch of humid jungle not far from where she was. One mile forward, across a river, was Karabara Village — and Charles’s field medical station was inside that village.

Avoiding Charles, he had found her administering vaccinations to the village children.

“I’m nearby,” he had told her. “If you need help, just ask.” He had left a map showing the location of his camp and left immediately.

She hadn’t even had the chance to say a word about her surprise.

Karabara Village was probably the most desolate place in the area. The hardship endured by several hundred people there defied description. Charles had arrived with his “medical rescue team,” along with a stack of medicine and food, making his entrance like a deity.

Yet what he spent the most time doing was taking photographs. He would select the healthiest-looking young people and children in the village and pose them in various cheerful arrangements in front of his field clinic, then photograph them. He had the gaunt elders hold the food he had brought and stand in a row in front of packaging boxes bearing his name, then photograph them. He himself cradled the most fragile infant in the village in an expression of infinite tenderness, and was photographed. When his team performed surgery on villagers, they were photographed.

Before long, these photographs would appear in London’s most prominent newspapers and magazines, adorned with all manner of glowing praise.

As for those villagers who were truly beyond hope and barely clinging to life — he simply looked them over, prescribed a token handful of pills, and considered his duty discharged.

Charles said that three months here would be quite sufficient. His mood remained excellent throughout, even as people in the village died one by one.

“Your medicine is very effective.” Annie carefully put away the pills. “Those children’s conditions have improved a great deal.”

“How is Lorelia?” He wiped the sweat from his face. “This place isn’t at all suitable for such a young child.”

“She’s in a town about fifty kilometers from here, with someone dedicated to looking after her. I visited just two days ago — she’s healthy.” Annie sighed. “At least far more fortunate than the children here.”

“I assumed you would stay with Lorelia every day. I hadn’t imagined you’d actually join the medical team.” He uncapped his canteen and took a sip.

“I wanted to do something for those children, even if it was only giving vaccinations.” She took the canteen from him and swallowed a mouthful. A look of fulfillment such as she had never worn before came over her face. “It makes me feel that I’m still a person who can be of use.”

“It also makes you feel that you’re a doctor,” he said, glancing at her.

She smiled and nodded: “You’re right. I should actually thank Charles for forcing me to come here. It’s in a place this harsh that my days have been happiest.” Then she glanced around furtively, lowered her voice with affected mystery: “Also — I’ve discovered a very strange plant here, and I’ve been running experiments behind Charles’s back.”

“Oh?”

9

A clear and moonlit night. The river murmured along; in the stifling, humid air, there was at last a rare trace of coolness. Fine flickers of moonlight danced on the water’s surface like shattered silver, beautiful to behold.

Yet Di Wu Pian and Annie had no interest in the night scenery. Their attention was fixed entirely on two wild mushrooms on the riverbank — two identical white mushrooms growing between interlaced tree roots, even the circular patterns on their caps indistinguishable from each other, standing there in an utterly charming fashion.

“That is… remarkable.” Di Wu Pian stared for a long moment before these words came out.

Less than an hour ago, those two mushrooms had been one white and one yellow — they had not even been the same species. Yet now, no matter how powerful a magnifying glass or even a microscope you might bring, you could find no difference between them whatsoever.

Annie held up the glass syringe in her hand — a trace of red liquid still remained inside — and said with excitement: “You see — it worked!”

With that, she reached into her first-aid kit, opened a medicine box, and from it drew out a slender leaf that was long, narrow, and vivid crimson.

“I discovered it by chance. This red leaf grows only in the forest to the west of the village. One day I saw a jungle cat with a chunk of flesh bitten out of its right leg — it ran there, bit off a piece of red leaf and chewed it for a long while, then licked the wound with its tongue. In less than half a minute, the missing flesh had grown back.” Annie struggled to contain her excitement as she continued: “I gathered some and ran experiments on mice, and found that this leaf doesn’t merely have the ability to regenerate muscle — it has the ability to cause ‘complete regeneration.'”

Had Di Wu Pian not seen it with his own eyes, he would never have believed that one mushroom could become completely identical to another.

Based on Annie’s experiments: extract the juice of this red leaf and inject it into Test Subject A; then draw blood from A and inject it into Test Subject B. One hour later, B would become identical to A in every respect. The precondition, naturally, was that both test subjects must be living organisms and must belong to the same broad category of life.

“Your red leaf may be the greatest discovery of this century.” Di Wu Pian let out a slow breath.

Annie embraced him with childlike joy: “Perhaps it could even turn one person into two!”

One person into two.

He gave a faint start, thinking of a man from many years past, weeping between two women who had died because of him.

He also remembered clearly — the old man had said that “splitting oneself into two people” was not a good thing.

He thought to say something to Annie, but in the end said nothing. She so rarely had cause to be this happy.

The moonlight gradually dimmed; the sound of the water flowed on. He walked her back to the medical station, and after a few steps, turned and looked once more at the two mushrooms.

10

A week later, Karabara Village was suddenly struck by a bizarre plague of rats.

In a place like this, rats causing trouble was nothing out of the ordinary — but this time was different from all previous occasions. More than a dozen black rats of unknown origin rampaged through the village, biting anyone they encountered. By the time the villagers had eliminated the rats with their blades and torches, a good number of people — including several young children — had been bitten. Several of the more serious cases, including the village chief’s son, had already fallen into deep unconsciousness.

More alarming still: the situation did not calm after the rats were gone. Those bitten not only had severe external injuries, but within twenty-four hours began coughing up blood — and even the family members caring for them started showing the same symptoms.

Charles completely panicked. His medical team was helpless against this suddenly erupting “plague,” and the supplies he had brought were entirely useless.

Just as he was preparing to flee with his people, Annie brought Di Wu Pian into the village in defiance of others’ opposition.

Charles — wearing two layers of antibacterial masks — stood as far from the village as possible, watching his wife’s hurrying figure, without even the courage to go after her and pull her back.

A man who had come only to “take photographs” had no capacity to face a sudden and terrible illness.

The village was in chaos; cries and groans of pain overlapped on all sides. For three days, Di Wu Pian went without sleep or rest, using his methods to treat every patient in the village, with Annie as his most capable assistant. Only when the condition of every patient had stabilized and the illness showed no further signs of spreading did he press his parched lips together, rub his bloodshot eyes, and walk out of a family’s house in utter exhaustion, leaning against the surrounding wall and sitting down.

Only at this point did Charles’s medical team “spring back to life” — with no more talk of retreating. He led his team members through every patient’s home in the village, “attentively” administering injections of harmless nutritional fluids. While doing all of this, his face was full of “genuine anxiety,” and he even shed “compassionate tears” when he witnessed an infant barely six months old wailing at the prick of a needle.

The villagers, recovered from their terror and confusion, still regarded Charles as a heaven-sent benefactor. Meanwhile, the stranger with a gourd at his waist who had appeared in their most desperate hour had vanished without a trace.

At that very moment, he stood on the riverbank where Annie had shown him the results of her experiment. The two white mushrooms between the tree roots had become several, and each one’s cap had cracked open to reveal a crevice seeping with mucus — like so many mouths drooling. Every passing gnat and insect was sucked in and devoured. The first mushroom — the one injected with the red leaf extract, whose blood had been drawn to bring about the change in the other — was gone.

Only some fragments remained in its place, like crumbs left by something that had eaten and moved on.

Di Wu Pian clenched his fist and murmured under his breath: “Abomination.”

He turned, drew a deep breath, and slowly left the riverbank.

Black smoke curled up from among the roots; black ash spread from a single point outward to cover the whole tree, sweeping up every altered mushroom beneath it. The scattered ash fell into the river, dissolved, and became ring upon ring of black mist — terrifying the fish and shrimp in the water.

No flame — and yet an absolute burning.

11

He tipped the canteen high and poured some cool water over his own head, and at last felt a little better.

A week had passed. The illness in Karabara Village had been brought under control — of course, the credit belonged to Charles.

He paid this little mind. What occupied him was Annie, and the red leaf extract she had discovered. She had taken him to the grove: two oddly shaped dark-red boulders twisted together, and from the crevices between them grew clumps of red leaves. Nowhere else in the area bore any trace of this plant.

He still had not told her about the mushrooms. She had not even realized that the rat plague’s source was connected to the experimental mice injected with the red leaf extract. A woman trapped in a hopeless marriage, who had suddenly discovered a ray of light belonging entirely to her — and then to be told that it was not a ray of light at all, only a disaster… Every time he watched her, so radiant and so thrillingly excited as she described to him how she planned to bring the red leaf extract back to England, how she intended to make it a contribution to the medical world, he could not bring himself to say what he knew to be true. He was even less capable of telling her that he intended to destroy the place where the red leaves grew.

Ahead, familiar footsteps approached. She always came to him on the last sliver of twilight.

He looked up — and a face covered in injuries came sharply into view.

“I asked him for a separation.” Annie sat down; golden light fell across her, keeping her from looking entirely wretched.

He said nothing, and handed her a tin of ointment. Annie asking Charles for a separation was not the first time — but it always ended the same way: Charles’s fist and Annie’s silence, unresolved and then set aside.

“I’m a very laughable woman, aren’t I?” Annie sat with her head bowed, turning the ointment tin over in her hands. “I want to leave yet I never manage to actually go. He says my father has accrued more gambling debts — without him, my father’s hands will eventually be cut off by the creditors. He says that thinking of Lorelia, he cannot imagine what kind of life a child without her mother will grow up to have. He says he loves me, and that only by being with him will I ever have happiness.”

Her eyes reddened. She propped her forehead on one hand; emotions suppressed for far too long finally broke through. She sobbed: “I don’t know what to do. I don’t want Charles to ruin whatever remains of my life — but what about my father, what about Lorelia…”

He watched her in silence. He thought to reach out and pat her on the head, but pulled his hand back.

She drew a deep breath, wiped her tears, lifted her reddened eyes, and looked at him with a bitter smile: “If there were two of me, that would be wonderful. The other me could go freely — like you — anywhere she wanted, and do whatever she wished.”

He did not take up the remark. He only asked: “The village has recovered, hasn’t it?”

She nodded: “Most people are on the mend. Only the village chief’s son — his condition is still somewhat unstable. His wound hasn’t healed. Charles is treating him right now.”

He stood: “Let me walk you back.” He paused, and added: “Your secret experiment — stop for now. Destroy all the red leaf extract you’ve already produced.”

Her eyes went wide: “Why?”

“Do you trust me?” he answered with a question.

“I have never not trusted you,” she said, slowly.

“Then do as I say.”

Annie opened her mouth, wanting to say something, but stopping herself.

12

The village chief’s son was growing worse. The thirteen-year-old boy lay on a filthy bed, racked by violent coughs at intervals; the pillow beneath him was covered in dried bloodstains.

The village chief and his three wives knelt beside Charles, clutching at his clothing and pleading desperately: they said this was their only surviving son — all the others had died young — and the village elder had declared the boy to be the “fate” bestowed upon Karabara Village by the heavens. If anything happened to him, the whole village would perish with him. They begged him to think of something, anything — whatever medicine he might try, please try it.

Charles could not save the boy. Not with his level of medicine.

“If you have no solution, please tell us — where is the young man who came to help before?” The babbling village chief suddenly said. “I remember that during the worst of the epidemic, it was he who first entered the village and treated us. He was holding many silver needles! Was he also a physician you brought? Why haven’t we seen him in recent days? Please, bring this physician to us!”

Charles struggled fiercely for a long moment to stop himself from planting a kick on this wailing, ungrateful Indian man.

How could a man on the verge of joining the Royal Medical Society tolerate being so publicly disparaged in his abilities? And with a comparison being made to that unwashed Chinese man of all people!

“I’m sorry, I don’t know that person. He is not one of our physicians.” These words had already reached the tip of Charles’s tongue — when he suddenly frowned and, unexpectedly, changed his mind. He helped the village chief to his feet and said in a warm, pleasant manner: “Very well! I’ll go and find him to examine Sanjay.”

The village chief was naturally effusive in his gratitude, saying that heaven would bless him.

Charles nodded, turned, and retrieved a syringe from his medicine kit. He walked to Sanjay’s side, looked at the boy — eyes tightly shut, lips pale as paper — and without hesitation drove the needle into his arm.

“I’ve just given him an antibiotic injection. Take good care of him. I’ll be right back.” Charles left this statement and walked briskly out of the village chief’s home.

He had not been lying to the village chief — he genuinely intended to bring the Chinese man to treat the boy. Even if he didn’t know where the man was, there was certainly someone who did.

The temperature today was hotter than any day before. Walking on the ground, it felt as though his feet were melting.

Charles walked alone along a small path, a smile of pure coldness creeping to the corners of his mouth.

13

“He asked you to come find me — to save someone?” Di Wu Pian frowned.

Annie nodded: “I also went to see Sanjay. That child’s condition is very serious. Charles genuinely has no way to treat him. If you don’t go, he won’t have even a shred of hope left.”

He was silent. Something in his heart told him something was wrong — a formless unease.

“You… don’t want to go?” Annie looked at him anxiously.

“Let’s go.” He rose and gathered his things.

She turned from worry to relief, drew a cross over her heart, and then reached into her large bag and produced a paper-wrapped parcel, placing it atop his luggage. “I brought something back from town yesterday. I thought it would suit you perfectly. Keep it as a gift — Christmas gift, birthday gift, whatever you like.”

He glanced at the parcel and nodded: “I’ll look at it when I get back.”

By the time the two of them reached the village entrance, night had fallen. Other than some light from the medical station not far off, the village was almost entirely dark.

He had barely stepped inside the village when he suddenly stopped and grabbed Annie’s arm.

“What…” She looked at him in confusion. “The village chief’s home is just over there — the one with the dark-red walls.”

He stared at her face. After a long moment: “Don’t stay near me. Get as far from me as you can.”

“What?” She was even more confused.

He could not explain the thought that had suddenly come to him — he simply wished she were far away from him.

“Don’t ask. I’ll go alone. You—” he frowned, “—go to my camp and wait for me.”

“Now?”

“Yes!”

“But you might need someone to help—”

“I don’t.” He gave her a gentle push backward and pointed at her sternly. “Go back!”

With that, he turned and walked briskly toward the village chief’s home.

Annie stood rooted in place for a long while. She hesitated for a moment, then finally turned and made her way toward his camp.

Since she trusted him, she would do as he said. Only one other thing — she could not manage it right now.

She sighed, walking alone along the muddy winding path. The half-moon above looked more desolate and lonely than at any other time.

She had walked for some time when a groan from the roadside stopped her feet. She turned to look carefully — an elderly woman sat by the path, a few wild fruits scattered on the ground around her.

She recognized this old woman — she lived at the far end of Karabara Village, both deaf and mute, with no children, only a bedridden husband at home.

The old woman, seeing Annie, reacted as though a savior had appeared, making all manner of unintelligible sounds — pointing at her twisted ankle one moment, pointing in the direction of her home the next.

There was no way to leave her there. Annie sighed, stepped forward, and helped the old woman to her feet.

14

A heartbreak of sobbing erupted from inside the village chief’s home.

The village chief clutched Sanjay’s body, his eyes bloodshot, without a word. Beside him, his three wives had long since collapsed in inconsolable weeping.

A hollow tube was still inserted in the trachea that had been cut open in Sanjay’s neck.

Di Wu Pian stood expressionlessly to one side, pulling off his blood-soaked gloves.

“I told you this method would certainly kill the boy.” Charles said to him with a face full of apparent sorrow.

During the treatment, Sanjay had suddenly suffocated. Di Wu Pian had decisively cut open the boy’s trachea and inserted a tube to assist with breathing — a technique the old man had taught him, saying that though it might appear crude and dangerous, it was worth attempting as a last resort.

But his decisiveness had not been enough to save the boy.

“I’m sorry, village chief.” Charles patted the village chief’s shoulder and deliberately spoke in the local dialect, which Di Wu Pian could not understand: “I warned this man not to act recklessly. But he said it didn’t matter — it was only a trial anyway. He has always been like this: he never treats patients’ lives as something of any consequence.”

The village chief’s eyes grew even redder, as though blood had been splashed into them.

In the room, besides the two of them, there was also the village’s skeletal, ghostlike old shaman. He had been in the village chief’s home ever since Sanjay fell ill, clutching his grimy prayer beads and chanting various incantations.

Sanjay was the “fate” of this village. If he died, the village was finished.

Whoever had taken Sanjay’s life — no matter who it was — deserved to die. Their life, to appease the anger of the gods.

The village chief leapt up like a madman, seized Di Wu Pian’s collar, dragged him outside, and unleashed every bit of his strength upon him in blows and kicks.

Di Wu Pian did not fight back — he let the man take out his grief over his dead son on him.

Charles stood motionless in the doorway, his expression unchanged. The scene he had long awaited had finally arrived — though this was only the beginning of the performance. This Chinese man had absolutely no idea what “killing” Sanjay meant.

The old shaman shuffled out the door and, overcome with grief and rage, shouted a torrent of words at the villagers who had come running at the sounds. Their expressions shifted one by one — from bewilderment to fear to fury — and they joined the village chief’s assault, one after another, raining blows on Di Wu Pian where he lay on the ground. Every fist was fierce. Every kick was heavy.

Di Wu Pian had now become Karabara Village’s greatest criminal.

Di Wu Pian curled up with his arms over his head, his wavering vision cutting through the storm of fists and feet — and there was Charles, smiling broadly, sheltered behind the crowd, waving at him like a victor.

That Sanjay had stopped breathing — he had known from the beginning it would happen. Something had introduced a toxin into the boy’s body that caused organ failure. His eyes and his experience could not be deceived.

Before he had even arrived here, someone had already tampered with this child.

Charles’s medical skills were not deep enough for what he had done — but using another to do the killing, that he was practiced at. Hand Di Wu Pian a child who was already doomed: as long as Sanjay died in Di Wu Pian’s hands, Charles could immediately use this to turn the village chief’s — and the entire village of Karabara’s — hatred onto him. These ignorant villagers had no idea how to probe deeply into the cause of death; they would believe only what they had seen with their own eyes.

No plan could have been more perfect. One life of a nameless nobody, exchanged for the life of a thorn in his side — an excellent trade. Charles watched coldly as Di Wu Pian was set upon, thinking: from now on, his “private property” would have no reason left to leave him. Two objectives accomplished in one stroke.

Di Wu Pian made no sound. God only knew how many bones in his body had already been broken — and these people, treating him as a demon to be destroyed, were the very people he had poured every last effort into pulling back from death.

A burst of searing pain in his thigh — someone had picked up a blade, intent on ending his life outright.

Those wretched, frenzied, contorted faces swayed and burned in the night. He suddenly remembered long ago — the old man’s head being split open by a thrown stone. He had asked the old man why he hadn’t fought back. The old man had said: Because I’m used to being steady.

But how was he to be steady now?

Break through the encirclement. If he wanted to, he certainly could. But right now he had absolutely no desire to flee. Flee? Why should he be the one to flee? From beginning to end, he had not done a single wrong thing. He had saved lives — and these people not only showed no gratitude, they wanted him dead in return…

Better not to have saved them.

Better not to have saved them.

The four words spun through his mind like a curse.

And there was Charles — the one who truly deserved to die — being treated instead like a god, standing there in a halo of glory, watching with gleeful relish as he was being hurt.

If, from the next moment on, this person no longer existed in the world — then surely there are those who would be happier for it…

Charles’s smiling face, Annie’s tearful eyes — they alternated in his scattered thoughts.

Better not to have saved them…

His fist clenched, suddenly and hard. He closed his eyes.

An invisible and raging fire surged out from his heart, from every cell in his body, and scattered in all directions.

Torrential air currents. The smell of scorching. Screams that tore through the darkness. In an instant, everything surrounded him.

“Di Wu Pian!”

From the darkness, a startled yet familiar voice called out.

He forced open his stinging eyes; in his already blurred vision, a woman appeared ahead, supporting an elderly woman.

“Stop—” His heart seemed to plunge from a great height, and he could not help crying out.

But it was too late.

The entire village of Karabara — including a radius of half a mile beyond its borders — was reduced entirely to scorched earth. And every person standing upon that land, other than himself, was turned to ash. Not one survived.

15

The sunlight was so harsh.

He had no memory of how he had made his way back to the riverbank.

He lay face-up in the mud, his mouth barely open, like a fish out of water.

Too fast. All of it had happened too fast. He could not yet quite believe it — the entire village of Karabara, Charles, and Annie — had completely disappeared in that invisible fire. Disappeared into his eyes, from his life.

From now on, there would be no one to follow him asking endless questions with their little notebook. No one to drag him out for photographs. No one to ask him to stand in moonlight and observe a mushroom. Nothing remained.

He lay motionless, fatigue pressing down on him like a mountain.

On his left wrist, a coolness suddenly seeped in — like a small hand, slightly cool but soft, pulling his shattered soul toward somewhere vast and indistinct.

In the cold wind, upon the scorched earth, amid crumbling ruins, wisps of smoke curled up and drifted.

A figure whose features were unclear stood before him. The voice was bright as a stream under moonlight: “Do you still remember who you are?”

Who am I?

The words burst from him without thinking: “Beneath the vault of heaven and earth, Lord of the Four Directions’ Fire — Yan Kuo.”

“A pity — you remember only your title, yet cannot recall your true duty.” The figure shook its head and smiled. “Yan Kuo, Lord of Fire of the Four Directions, keeper of the nine heavens’ flames: your purpose is not merely to bestow warmth in all directions, but also to burn away all that is evil and corrupt in creation. Yet you have now departed from your true nature — at the slightest offense from others, you unleash thunderous fury, acting on impulse, burning all before you with the fires of heaven, slaying countless lives.”

“And what of it?!”

“I wish you to find your way back.”

“Who are you?”

Before the words had faded, a ring of white light flew from the figure’s hand. He could not dodge in time; the white light struck directly between his brows.

His entire body shuddered as though struck by lightning. Then a current of cool warmth poured down from the crown of his head, and his eyes saw no longer scorched ruins — but a young woman: her black hair dark as ink-dye, her gauze skirt woven like cloud. She held a jade-green leaf in her hand, placed it to her crimson lips, and blew a sound from it of such purity and beauty it rivaled the music of heaven itself. A woman of near-celestial grace — if only the door behind her were not the Gate of Avici Hell, surrounded on all sides by hideous and malevolent spirits. The woman’s composure was in stark contrast to the ghastly demons around her — and yet the entire scene possessed its own inexplicable harmony.

“In the age of primordial antiquity, among the three realms, the most gifted musician was called Yue Yin Niang. With only a single leaf, she could draw forth boundless celestial music. Yet this woman sought a special wish from the heavens — she willingly spent her entire life at the Gate of Avici Hell, her heavenly music played for none but the evil spirits of the underworld. No matter what schemes the demons devised — temptation, insults, harm — she remained unmoved, focusing only on her music, one song after another, dissolving the purest and most tranquil spirit into her notes, with the sole wish that the evil spirits of hell might find peace in their fury and return to the right path. It is said that the evil spirits purified by her music ultimately repented in sincerity and were released from hell to reenter the cycle of reincarnation. After Yue Yin Niang’s death, her body transformed into thirteen round stones and was kept within the realm of the underworld. Now I have sought out Yue Yin Niang and offer her to you — may her spirit of steadiness and serenity help you find your way from purgatory at last.”

That voice spoke close and far in his ears, and gradually, at last, receded. It left only him — unable to move, unable to speak — as a heavy drowsiness, carrying a cool and clean fragrance, like a melodious tune, flowed in from every limb and bone. The last thing he saw was still that woman — tranquil and at ease amid the multitude of demons.

He jolted awake and sat up. The sun was still blazing; all around him, everything was as before. In the river, a fish blew a bubble.

He raised his left hand and stared at the string of beads on his wrist — beads he still could not remove — for a very long time.

Yan Kuo, Lord of the Four Directions’ Fire… one of the first divine lords of the celestial realm…

The vanished memories seeped back, little by little, from the emptiness.

He climbed to his feet. His gaze fell on his luggage — Annie’s paper-wrapped parcel was still there, undisturbed.

He unwrapped it.

A white physician’s robe.

He held the robe, and suddenly lost the ability to stand. He sank back down to the ground.

The gourd at his waist bumped against him with a few soft sounds.

He unhooked the gourd and held it up before his eyes. A shaft of sunlight fell on it, illuminating it to a deep golden gleam, and even the patterns on its surface seemed to shift and change.

He found himself missing the old man. If the old man were still here, Karabara Village would not have ended up as it did…

Di Wu Pian drew a deep breath. Never in all his life had he looked at this gourd the way he looked at it now — with such single-minded certainty, such unwavering resolve.

Then, his eyes changed. He froze.

The essence of the healer’s way — it is right here inside this.

Until the day you can peel out a leaf vein, you cannot be called a fully-fledged physician; you cannot become a healer who wanders the world bringing medicine to those in need.

— Every word the old man had said that he had not understood — he understood them all now.

Clutching the gourd and the physician’s robe, he knelt in the full brilliance of midday sun, as still as a stone statue.

16

Many years later.

New Delhi. May.

Inside a small tin-walled shack, a man and a woman stood facing each other. The atmosphere between them was far from friendly.

“I will tell you plainly: of the three vials of red leaf extract that my great-grandmother left behind, one of them I used yesterday for a human trial. My research facility is nearby — if you wish to join me, you are more than welcome.”

“Yesterday?” He looked at the young, beautiful, proud-spirited British woman before him.

“Yes.”

“I already warned you not to touch that substance.” He sighed. The physician’s robe on his body — having been with him for a very, very long time — had been mended countless times; its color much resembled his salt-and-pepper hair.

“And I have asked you countless times to take me to the place where those red leaves grow!” The woman raised her chin. “My great-grandmother’s notes say that she was the only one you took there.”

He looked at her, undisturbed: “I will tell you one last time. That place was destroyed by me. There is no longer anything in this world that can make two different people completely identical. Emily — the fact that your great-grandmother did not destroy all of her research notes and the extracted red leaf extract is genuinely regrettable.” He paused, then smiled: “That the secret your grandmother and mother never discovered has, after all these years, come to your attention — that is another regret.”

“I don’t believe you destroyed that place.” Emily grew somewhat indignant and rose to her feet. “My mother told me that more than nearly a hundred years ago, the Stuart family were the pillars of British medicine. My great-grandmother’s father and husband were directors of Grayling Hospital. After my great-grandmother and her husband went missing in an accident in India, the Stuart family’s reputation collapsed entirely. My grandmother, who had lost her mother, was raised by servants and brought back to England, spending her whole life in poverty. My mother had to work three jobs to make ends meet.” Her voice grew more and more agitated. “I worked incredibly hard to gain entry to the finest medical school, earn my doctorate, and enter the most excellent medical institution. If heaven had not blessed me, I don’t think I would have been so fortunate as to re-inherit the old Stuart family estate — and then find, in the basement, what a servant had brought back from India: my great-grandmother’s belongings. Do you know what the discovery of red leaf extract means for this world? For me? All of this is a sign — heaven has chosen me to reclaim the honor the Stuart family lost!”

He coughed twice, shook his head with a smile, and suddenly asked: “Can you peel a complete leaf vein from a single leaf?”

She frowned: “What are you talking about?”

He smiled: “If you cannot — it means you have not yet earned the right to call yourself a true physician.”

Emily could no longer restrain herself. She rushed to his side and dropped to her knees: “I don’t care whether you are truly Di Wu Pian himself or a descendant of his. I know you oppose the red leaf extract because you fear we cannot control it. If you still value the friendship between us and your ancestors — please take me there! Only by collecting a sufficient quantity of red leaf extract can I have any chance of developing an antidote that reverses the red leaf extract’s regenerative effects! And if I develop an antidote, you need have no further concern about the red leaf extract causing serious harm — isn’t that so?”

He still gave no indication of his position.

Emily wiped her reddening eyes, stood, and said, word by word: “Do you know who the human trial subject is — the person who served as Subject A?”

He frowned.

“Me.” Emily suddenly smiled. “I injected the red leaf extract into my own body, then drew my blood and injected it into that Indian girl. Without a means of developing an antidote, the ‘regenerative’ effects of the red leaf extract on our bodies will not stop. Will you help us now?”

He was silent for a moment, then said: “Very well. First thing tomorrow morning, come and find me.”

“Really?!” Emily’s anger transformed instantly into joy. “It’s settled — we’ll meet tomorrow.”

But she had barely turned around — the smile had not yet left her face — when her entire body seized up. Two seconds later, her legs gave way and she crumpled to the floor.

A needle, as fine as a single hair, had struck her neck with perfect precision.

And at precisely the same moment, two men and a woman — three disheveled, dust-covered individuals — had just tumbled into the clinic. The one in the middle, with unsteady hands and feet, a flushed complexion, and a red swollen lump squarely in the center of her nose, weakly pointed at him and shouted with all her remaining strength: “Are you Di Wu Pian?!”

My apologies to everyone — that was me.

This is how I came to meet Di Wu Pian, that old fellow, for the first time.

Don’t blame me for arriving so late. Blame the distance from Africa to India — it’s far too long! Just over a month ago, after we had resolved the business with Xiao Qing, the three large characters the Boulder-Cleaving Axe — which looked like lapis lazuli — gave me were these utterly baffling words: “Di Wu Pian.” Completely incomprehensible. During that stretch of time, the most frequent thing the three of us did was read: we flipped through every book we came across along the way — but only the fifth chapter.

Truly, sometimes I despise these eccentric stones. Can’t you just speak to me plainly? Would it kill you to give me a hint with a complete subject, predicate, and object?

With no clue what to do, Ao Chi wanted to return to Bu Ting, I wanted to press onward, and Jia Yi only slept and offered no opinion. We settled it with rock-paper-scissors — I won. Then, in the outskirts of Cape Town, we encountered Shaluk — an Indian man who had come to South Africa for work. What he was in the middle of doing at the time was… throwing himself into a river to commit suicide.

Ao Chi fished this unfortunate soul out of the water. According to Shaluk’s anguished account: he had worked in South Africa for five years and had finally scraped together a hard-earned sum of money. He was planning to set off for home in New Delhi two days later — his elderly mother had fallen gravely ill, and he didn’t know if he would make it in time to see her one last time. That very day, a fire broke out in his rented home and turned all of his belongings — including the cash he kept under his bed — to ash. In a moment of impulse, the thought of suicide had come to him.

All right, this incident tells us two things. First: impulse is the devil! Money can be earned again; once your life is gone, nothing remains. Not everyone who hangs themselves or jumps into a river is lucky enough to run into a proprietress like me. Second: please, do not store too much cash at home, dear readers!

Looking at this fully grown man burning with the desire to go home, I played the good Samaritan once more and escorted the Buddha all the way to the west. Once I had found out this fellow’s home address, I knocked him out on the spot, flung him over Ao Chi’s back, and said: “To India!”

Ao Chi got angry again, saying he hated eating curry.

Jia Yi said we’d need to stock up on mosquito repellent.

In any case, one of the results of this whole affair was that Shaluk found himself inexplicably transported overnight from Cape Town back to the door of his home in a slum in northwestern New Delhi. The other result was that an Indian mosquito stung me on the nose — not only leaving me with an ugly red bump, but shamefully giving me a fever. A longtime demon who had never run a fever in her life had been bested by an Indian mosquito! After all, ever since I started carrying a little one in my belly, my constitution has been getting stranger and stranger.

The flustered Ao Chi grabbed a random local person and asked them where the nearest hospital was. That person pointed us in a direction and said that there was a clinic there, run by a Chinese doctor — and the clinic’s name and the doctor’s own name were both peculiar, both called “Di Wu Pian.”

Touching the warm, vibrating Boulder-Cleaving Axe, I stood before the small clinic — nothing more than a simple tin-walled shack tucked away in a quiet spot — and my restless soul was suddenly at peace.

Well done, mosquito. That bite was not wasted on me.

17

Di Wu Pian not only treated my illness, but also proactively asked us to stay in his clinic for three days — without explaining why.

He said he could tell I was not human, because he himself was not, either. Refreshingly candid.

The woman doctor called Emily was trussed up firmly in a chair in the inner room. While arranging all of this, he told us he was saving someone.

I had not a shred of doubt about him.

This man — in his old physician’s robe, a young and handsome face, yet hair as grey and lifeless as an old man’s — was composed as a deep, still pool of water.

This person had no malevolent air. And more importantly, he had no breath.

The moment I arrived, I noticed the string of moonstone beads on his left wrist — clear, tranquil, and warm. When he noticed me looking at them, he smiled: “You like these.”

“They’re beautiful,” I said, a thermometer tucked in my armpit. “You don’t often see a man wearing moonstone beads.”

“They have been with me for many years — even longer than that gourd.” He pointed at the old, weathered gourd hanging in the window, then shook his wrist. “They’ve grown together with my soul. They cannot be removed.”

“Ah,” I said, blinking. “Then they must carry a very interesting story.”

“They do.” He nodded, looking at the gourd in the window. “Do you believe that those of us who are not entirely human often have mysterious premonitions?”

“Such as?”

“For instance — lately, I have had a persistent feeling that someone particular would come to find me. Not merely a descendant of someone I once knew.” He picked up the thermometer and shook it. “Their coming may give the whole of my life a perfectly complete ending. Now then — your temperature is back to normal. What kind of demon are you, and where do you come from?”

“A tree demon. From a place called Wang Chuan.” I found I quite enjoyed talking with him — no need for roundabout approaches.

“A very fortunate demon — going to be a mother.” He glanced at me, then at Jia Yi asleep in the corner of the room and Ao Chi eating a bowl of curry with visible misery, and smiled. “You must also have a very long story.”

From the inner room came Emily’s furious voice at intervals: “Let me out, you despicable creature!”

I said: “I’d rather hear yours.”

He thought for a moment and nodded: “Very well. Let me brew some coffee. The story is long — my throat will get dry.”

“Please don’t — I don’t drink coffee.” I stood and retrieved a tin of Fu Sheng from my bag, gave it a shake. “Let’s have tea.”

“I haven’t had tea in many years.”

“Which is exactly why I’m giving you a treat — try it. If you like the taste, I’ll sell it to you at twenty percent off.”

“All the cash I have is in that box over there — probably not more than five hundred US dollars.”

“How can you be so poor?”

18

Whether he was Old Sun’s student Di Wu Pian or the legendary celestial lord Yan Kuo, Lord of the Four Directions’ Fire — by the time he finished his story, a full day had passed. In the evening light, both of our teacups had run dry.

“You have no breath.” I held my fingers beneath his nose. Nothing but cold air.

“Even a god has the day when life comes to its end.” He smiled. “It isn’t that I have no breath at all — only that this past month, my breathing has grown slower than before.”

“You intend to handle this your own way.”

“It is the most fitting solution.” He nodded. “Every celestial god walking the right path, regardless of how they appear now, possesses an original spirit that is the most perfect medicine of all — sufficient to resolve any illness. Besides, even if I do nothing, this original spirit will not last much longer.”

I thought for a moment and smiled: “We’ve only known each other two days. You’ve already told me every last secret about yourself — aren’t you afraid this demon of mine will harbor ill intentions?”

He gave a laugh and scratched his head: “How strange — you always remind me of Old Sun.”

“I look a great deal better than that old man, thank you very much!” I said, indignant.

“I would like to buy your tea.” He changed course abruptly. “Bitter before sweet. It has a very fine taste.”

Oh! In that instant I was a jumble of joy and sorrow — joy because I was finally on the verge of completing my first sale, and sorrow because this pauper only had five hundred dollars.

But before our transaction could begin, another group of fierce and uninvited guests came charging in.

More than a dozen identical “Emilys” came streaming out of the research facility Emily had secretly set up nearby and, like GPS-guided missiles, made their way with unerring accuracy toward the clinic.

Di Wu Pian made it very clear to me: the red leaf extract, that near-demonic substance, might be able to make another person identical to oneself — but within seventy-two hours, the person who had been changed would spontaneously split off yet another “self.” That newly split being would continue to split, increasing in number like runners in a relay race, proportional to the potency of the red leaf extract. Once the splitting ceased, the first thing these beings would set out to do was “hunt for food” — and the first food they sought was the “original body.” Just like the white mushroom that had been consumed by its own copies. After consuming the original body and gaining its strength, these “regeneration products” would then turn toward any other available living organism — including human beings. The experimental mice Annie had used back then were the clearest demonstration. And before he had destroyed the two demonic boulders covered with red leaves, he had kept some specimens; his own experiments had provided even more compelling proof of the red leaf extract’s terrifying nature.

What he had not anticipated was that Emily — desperately eager to carve out a place for herself in the medical world — had followed Annie’s notes to India in search of the place where the red leaves grew. But Annie had not recorded the specific location in her notes — only that she had gone there with the man she most admired and adored, the Chinese physician called “Di Wu Pian.” And so Emily had used the pretense of medical aid work to set up a temporary research facility here and search for the red leaves. Unfortunately, even the local people had never seen such a plant. Despondent and on the verge of returning to England, Emily had by chance discovered this small clinic hidden outside the slum, the one bearing the name “Di Wu Pian.”

When she saw Di Wu Pian, Emily was completely stunned. Her great-grandmother had tucked a photograph between the pages of her notebook — a photograph of herself and a man, with their names clearly written on the back: Annie and Di Wu Pian.

And the man in the photograph — aside from the color of his hair — was utterly indistinguishable from the man standing before her.

Even more astonishing was that upon first seeing her, he had blurted out “Annie” — she knew she looked very much like this great-grandmother of hers.

She was startled, and also bewildered — if he truly was Di Wu Pian, how could he have lived to this day and still look so young? But she quickly steadied herself. Finding the red leaves was the priority. She didn’t care whether this person was Di Wu Pian himself or a descendant of his — she was certain he knew the location and pressed him in every way she could to reveal it.

He refused every time.

Until Emily said she had already used herself as a test subject.

What followed was exactly the scene I witnessed firsthand.

And precisely because of this chain of causes and effects, three bystanders — me, Ao Chi, and Jia Yi — were now trapped inside this tiny clinic. Less than an hour ago, the more than a dozen starving, food-seeking “Emilys” had arrived right on schedule.

During our tea conversation, Di Wu Pian had told me that he had kept Emily in the clinic for two reasons: one, to ensure her safety; and two, because he needed to “handle this matter properly.”

And now, the “Emilys” surrounding the door and windows had all split from the Indian girl. Destroying them entirely would not be difficult — but it would also mean that innocent child had no hope of survival.

The doors and windows were being rattled harder and harder. If nothing was done soon, the tin shack would be beyond saving.

Ao Chi shouted at us: “If no one says something soon, I’m going to fight my way out!”

“Easy there, my friend.” He smiled at Ao Chi, then looked steadily at me. “That matter — I’ll leave it in your hands.”

“Di Wu Pian—”

Before my words were even out, before I could even see his movement, Di Wu Pian had vanished from the room — without a single superfluous word, he dissolved into a streak of red light and shot out through the window.

The temperature inside the room suddenly rose considerably. An invisible fire left this much as evidence of its existence.

The doors and windows that had been banging and rattling went entirely silent. Those beings that had been desperate in their search for food were torn away by a powerful force; a searing air current poured through the gaps in the doors and windows, sending even Ao Chi and Jia Yi stumbling, knocked off their feet onto the ground.

Strange light spun outside the shack. The gourd hanging in the window was bathed in every color, beautiful beyond anything belonging to this world.

No matter how hard anyone inside tried to move forward, they could not take a single step. A force that belonged to neither the human world nor the demon world had completely sealed off the tin shack.

The entire process lasted only two or three seconds. The air currents and the strange light vanished all at once.

Ao Chi broke through the door and charged outside. There was no trace of those creatures anywhere. Lying on the ground was only a girl of thirteen or fourteen, wearing a white patient’s gown, unconscious.

A string of white beads shimmered with faint blue light in the darkness, resting on the girl’s chest.

From somewhere far off came the clamor of voices and footsteps; flashlight beams swept erratically through the dark.

The commotion here had at last attracted the attention of passersby.

I let out a long slow breath. I picked up the string of beads, then went back inside to collect the gourd and the iron box Di Wu Pian had left on the table. Ao Chi carried the girl on his back; Jia Yi brought Emily. Before anyone arrived to spot us, we slipped quietly away.

The tin shack with its “Di Wu Pian” sign hung outside stood empty in the night.

19

Emily’s mind was still somewhat dazed — but this didn’t prevent us from searching her research facility and finding the remaining red leaf extract to destroy it completely. Jia Yi’s talent for finding things is first-rate; if he weren’t a Daoist, he could easily have been a detective. Emily, who had very nearly caused a catastrophe, curled up in a corner of the room and stared blankly at us, murmuring as though talking in her sleep: “You know — the red leaf extract could win me a Nobel Prize. The Stuart family’s honor could be reborn through me.”

Hearing this, I looked at this woman who could genuinely be called accomplished, and suddenly asked: “Are you a doctor?”

She looked at me as though I had insulted her: “Of course I am. I graduated from the finest medical school. I hold a position in the most excellent medical institution. I am the finest doctor in this world.”

“You are not. A true physician spends their entire life doing one thing.” I said quietly. “Saving people.”

She froze.

“You are not steadfast enough.” I turned away. “Which is why you can never peel the leaf vein cleanly from a leaf.”

With that, I reached into my bag and found a piece of paper, placing it on the table: “This is something Di Wu Pian wrote down during our conversation that day. He asked me to pass it on to you. It’s in Chinese — find a good translator.”

“He gave this to me?” Emily asked hesitatingly.

I said nothing more and walked straight out of the room.

Epilogue

A competent physician lies here.

These characters, carved in Chinese, were inscribed on a smooth stone.

The characters were a little rough — carved by Ao Chi, whose strength is greater than mine. Carving characters into stone was well-suited to him.

Not far from the tin shack, beside a small river, this stone sat half-buried in the earth, thoroughly inconspicuous.

Di Wu Pian had told me: the slum nearby was on the very site of what had once been Karabara Village.

He had not only stayed in this place — he had traveled to many other places as well. Though treating patients was an exhausting pursuit, he always did it with everything he had. Being a doctor was not for the sake of honor or praise. Saving people was the only thought.

And so, in the end, he came to understand why the old man had been so steady; why the old man had traced the character “one” on his forehead; why he had never been able to still his heart and peel a leaf vein. When your heart holds only a single, unwavering conviction — other things, whether temptation or harm, praise or condemnation, will not move your spirit or cloud your true nature.

To be a doctor, steadfastly save people. To be a student, steadfastly learn. To be a lover, steadfastly love. To be a demon, steadfastly sell tea. In truth, it is as simple as that.

A heart that wanders, a will that shifts by the day — if one cannot even settle one’s own nature, how can one withstand the shocks that come from the outside world? Rash action, leading to grave error — that naturally becomes unavoidable.

True steadiness is not an expressionless face that merely appears calm. It is having, always, that single unwavering conviction within.

Fortunately — Di Wu Pian had not, in the end, disappointed the old man’s expectations.

I placed the iron box into the deep pit dug before the stone marker. Inside it were complete, intact leaf veins.

I also had one more thing in my hand: that old, weathered gourd.

Di Wu Pian had said: the old man had not lied to him. The essence of the healer’s way truly was all on this gourd — he had seen it, that day.

I had asked him whether it was some supreme and secret manual of medicine; he smiled and said I was overthinking it. It was only a passage inscribed on the gourd by a special method — you had to look with great steadiness and great care before it became visible.

The sunlight today was fine and bright. I picked up the gourd and slowly turned it. The mottled patterns on its surface shifted and changed in the light, and after some time, they gradually resolved into neat lines of text:

Whenever a great physician treats illness, they must first calm their spirit and settle their will, free of desire and selfish seeking, and first give rise to a great heart of compassion and mercy, with a vow to relieve the suffering of all sentient beings…

So this was “the essence of the healer’s way.”

Wait — hadn’t Di Wu Pian also written this very passage for Emily? I still remember the name written at the signature — Sun Simiao.

Could it be that “Old Sun,” the man who claimed to be one thousand three hundred and thirty years old, Di Wu Pian’s Teacher — was the legendary King of Medicine, Sun Simiao?

Impossible. How could a human being live that long?

Then again, this world is full of wonders without limit. A celestial god can come to the human world and be a doctor. A tree demon can marry a dragon. A Daoist can work as a hired hand in a demon’s shop. So — if there existed someone extraordinary enough to live to over a thousand years, perhaps that is not impossible either.

Well. Whether Di Wu Pian’s teacher was Sun Simiao or not no longer matters. What matters is: a good teacher produced a good student — and this world is still, at the end of the day, a place that does not disappoint.

I placed the gourd gently beside the iron box, along with that unfinished tin of Fu Sheng.

After the earth was filled back in, Ao Chi suddenly asked: “I remember that fellow said there was five hundred US dollars in the box.”

“I already took it out,” I said.

“Split it evenly.” Ao Chi extended his hand. “I don’t have much cash on me.”

“This was the first tin of Fu Sheng I ever sold.” I looked squarely at Ao Chi’s face. “No matter how broke we are — even if I sold you — I will not touch that five hundred dollars.”

“Why do you always say you’re going to sell me?”

“Dragon meat fetches a good price. If you sold me — I’m just a tree. Nobody could even bite through me.”

“Might I point out — I have yet to receive even one month’s wages. If selling each other will yield money, please do so at your earliest convenience.” Jia Yi tossed down the shovel, adjusted his dark glasses, and said with perfect composure.

“And what business is that of yours to say anything?”

“Put it on the tab. I’ll settle accounts when we get back to Bu Ting. Be a good lad.”

I imagine that if Di Wu Pian truly rests here in eternal peace, he would probably be kept thoroughly disturbed by our racket.

Honestly, I did not feel deep sadness at Di Wu Pian’s passing. He deserved a rest. This world will not be left with only one wandering healer who tends to all people. Nor will there be only one Yue Yin Niang — steadfast in heart, benevolent toward all living beings.

Look in the mirror, and perhaps you too are one of them.

So this world is still a lovely place.

All right — I need to run. There are just too many mosquitoes in India. I cannot take it anymore.